The Hampstead Mystery eBook

“Flack!” he called, and unconsciously
his voice dropped to a sharp whisper in the presence
of death. “Flack, come here.”

When Flack reached the door of the library he saw
his chief kneeling beside the prostrate body of a
dead man. The body lay clear of the table, near
the foot of an arm-chair. Instinctively Flack
walked on tiptoe to his chief.

“Is he dead, sir?” he asked.

“Cold and stiff,” replied the inspector,
in a hushed voice. “He’s been dead
for hours.”

Flack noted that the body was fully dressed, and he
saw a dark stain above the breast where the blood
had welled forth and soaked the dead man’s clothes
and formed a pool on the carpet beside him.

Inspector Seldon opened the dead man’s clothes.
Over his heart he found the wound from which the blood
had flowed.

“There it is, Flack,” he said, touching
the wound lightly with his finger. “It
doesn’t take a big wound to kill a man.”

As he spoke the sharp ring of a telephone bell from
downstairs reached them.

“That’s Inspector Chippenfield,”
said Inspector Seldon, rising to his feet. “Stay
here, Flack, till I go and speak to him.”

CHAPTER II

“Six-thirty edition: High Court Judge murdered!”

It was not quite 5 p.m., but the enterprising section
of the London evening newspapers had their 6.30 editions
on sale in the streets. To such a pitch had the
policy of giving the public what it wants been elevated
that the halfpenny newspapers were able to give the
people of London the news each afternoon a full ninety
minutes before the edition was supposed to have left
the press. The time of the edition was boldly
printed in the top right-hand corner of each paper
as a guarantee of enterprise if not of good faith.
On practical enterprise of this kind does journalism
forge ahead. Some people who have been bred up
in a conservative atmosphere sneer at such journalistic
enterprise. They affect to regard as unreliable
the up-to-date news contained in newspapers which
are unable to tell the truth about the hands of the
clock.

From the cries of the news-boys and from the announcements
on the newspaper bills which they displayed, it was
assumed by those with a greedy appetite for sensations
that a judge of the High Court had been murdered on
the bench. Such an appetite easily swallowed the
difficulty created by the fact that the Law Courts
had been closed for the long vacation. In imagination
they saw a dramatic scene in court—­the
disappointed demented desperate litigant suddenly drawing
a revolver and with unerring aim shooting the judge
through the brain before the deadly weapon could be
wrenched from his hands. But though the sensation
created by the murder of a judge of the High Court
was destined to grow and to be fed by unexpected developments,